I’m very pleased to tell you that my new story Catch of the Day is now out at SQ Mag, a delightful speculative fiction zine from Australia. This “tale of magical artefact smuggling, full of betrayal and twists and turns” is now freely available online. Enjoy!
Posts Tagged ‘creativity’
Quote for the Day: On Action
Posted in Writing, tagged creativity, Dale Carnegie, finishing, inspiration, Motivation, quotes, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on February 28, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Leave JK Rowling Alone, She’s Trying to Write
Posted in Writing, tagged books, creativity, Fiction, harry potter, inspiration, JK Rowling, john scalzi, Lynn Shepard, Mark Pryor, more pie, quotes, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
I planned to avoid the kerfuffle around Lynn Shepard’s call for JK Rowling to stop writing, because the idea that Rowling should quit for the good of other writers is flat-out ridiculous. The sensible approach to scarcity isn’t to fight over the last tiny slice; instead, make the pie bigger. Rowling has certainly done that.
Mark Pryor’s article says most of what I was thinking about Lynn Shepard’s essay, and I was glad to see it come out. Here he is on Rowling: “…authors like you actually bring more readers to our books. More books from you means more readers for us, not fewer.”
I do disagree with a point at the end of Pryor’s article, however. The part where the author says that writers don’t write to make money is an old excuse to explain away economic marginalization: “…writers don’t sit down and write books to make money… We write because we love to share our stories.”
It has been said before but bears repeating: Doctors don’t examine you out of the love of anatomy, plumbers don’t fix your pipes for free. Professional writers are, or should be, the same. Yes, most people can “write” in the broad sense of the word, but very few can do it at professional levels. It’s like dismissing an Olympic sprinter because “anyone can run.”
“…this is the sort of thinking, intentional or otherwise, that gives bad people cover to screw writers with regard to money, and gives uncertain writers a reason to shrug off being screwed.”
— John Scalzi
Writers have a lot of motivations, and the pleasure of being read is certainly one. But we also write because (we hope) it pays the bills, because it’s less physically demanding than ditch digging, or because we have something to say. We write to entertain, to connect with other human beings, to understand the world and to communicate what we see. We write to make sense of a problem or an emotion and to pass that knowledge along. We write to provide adventure or mystery or humor or a place of refuge. If we do it well (and that’s what we’re all striving for, is it not?), we give to the reader, not the other way around.
And Ms Rowling does it well.
Inspirational TED Talks for Writers
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, creativity, Fiction, fun, inspiration, Motivation, storytelling, TED talks, Thoughts, Writers, writing on February 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.
—Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Perhaps your weekend will be spent climbing Everest or solving cold fusion, but if you plan to spend at least some time facing down a blank page in an effort to write, the following TED talks may be of some use. This collection comes to us via Aerogramme Writers’ Studio and includes a variety of topics and speakers:
- Chimamanda Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story
- Isabel Allende: Tales of Passion
- Andrew Stanton: The Clues to a Great Story
- Lisa Bu: How Books Can Open Your Mind
- Amy Tan: Where Does Creativity Hide?
- Billy Collins: Everyday Moments, Caught in Time
- Elif Shafak: The Politics of Fiction
- Joe Sabia: The Technology of Storytelling
- Elizabeth Gilbert: Your Elusive Creative Genius
- Tracy Chevalier: Finding the Story Inside the Painting
- Jarred McGinnis: Writing is the Only Magic I Still Believe In
- Julian Friedmann: The Mystery of Storytelling
- John Green: The Paper Town Academy
I featured #9 in a previous post but there are a dozen other talks too. A baker’s dozen. … Hmm, baking… Perhaps I’ll make something tasty to go along with the above educational material. Because, cookies. Butterscotch ripple cookies, even:)
Fifty Problems
Posted in Likes, tagged constructive creativity, creativity, design, innovation, inspiration, Peter Smart, practical, problem solving on February 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
This is the coolest thing: a designer decided to tackle fifty problems in fifty days. I think it’s terrific when creative people find ways to use their talents to fix problems, particularly when they focus on challenges most of us have been living with for years. It’s easy to get used to doing things one way even when that way is not optimal, and once acclimated it can be hard to even see the issue, much less fix it.
This is what happens when creative people look at the world with fresh eyes, and decide that they can, and should, do something to make it better. Constructive creativity for the win.
What “fifty problems” would you choose?
Not Today
Posted in Funny, Writing, tagged creativity, funny, impostor syndrome, The Onion, Thoughts, work, writing on February 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The Onion does it again, succinctly summing up what so many of us have felt at one time or another in hilarious fashion.
Report: Today The Day They Find Out You’re A Fraud
While experts agree you’ve been remarkably successful so far at keeping up the ruse that you’re a capable, worthwhile individual, a new report out this week indicates that today is the day they finally figure out you’re a complete and utter fraud.
…
“They’re all on to you,” the report continues. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
Whatever, impostor syndrome, I’ve got work to do.
Try, Try Again
Posted in Writing, tagged creativity, failure, inspiration, progress, quotes, Samuel Beckett, success, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing, yay on January 29, 2014| 1 Comment »
Some of you will have seen this poem, but I fielded a question about it recently and wanted to revisit what is a sometimes painful yet ultimately encouraging truth:
Ever tried.Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
—Samuel Beckett
Not “stop trying.” Not “don’t fail.” Fail better. It’s a sentiment close to the heart of many writers:)
Persistence
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, Chuck Wendig, creativity, Fiction, finishing, Kameron Hurley, Motivation, rejection, sff, work, Writers, writing on January 22, 2014| 1 Comment »
“Persistence.” That’s what my father told me when I asked what it took to succeed in graduate school. Smart helps, yes, but there’s no beating the commitment and perhaps sheer bloody stubbornness that comes with persistence. That advice served me well in academia and elsewhere, particularly when it came to writing.
There are a lot of challenges around writing: the difficulty of learning a skill so complex that the greatest achievement is to make it look simple, the often solitary pursuit of improvement, and “overnight success” that is usually anything but. Kameron Hurley, author of God’s War, has an essay about this topic today on Chuck Wendig’s site. She sums it up well:
Persistence, I realized, was not the end goal. It was the actual game.
Now, I argue for a balanced approach to writing or whatever your project may be, and I’m too attached to my family and my health to sacrifice them in the hopes that will make me a better writer. For me, the opposite is true; strength in one area translates into strength in others. If, as my ever-wise father says, you are willing to persist. That note rings loud and true.
For more on Kameron’s experiences and her long journey to (and eventual redefinition of) “success,” read the full essay here.
Then whatever it is you are working on, finish it.
A Season in the Show
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, creativity, Fiction, john scalzi, Motivation, sff, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 20, 2014|
John Scalzi has a nice piece up today with encouraging words about persistence in writing… I particularly like this bit:
Who knows what will happen tomorrow.
Will you, as a writer, become like George RR Martin? Probably not. But you might find your own measure of success, so long as you keep showing up.
This last weekend I had an enjoyable time at the Confusion convention, which is no surprise, as I usually do — it’s one of the reasons I’ve gone back to it now for nine years running. I mostly hung out in the bar and talked to writers, doing the usual combination of business talk and complete idiocy, as writers generally do at conventions when they chat with each other.
One evening I talked to a couple of different authors about writing careers and the ups and downs careers have, and how from time to time we’re all filled with frustration with them, especially during a downturn. We all want to be on award lists; we all want to have bestsellers. If those things don’t happen we can wonder if what we’re doing matters much at all. As we were talking about it I came up with a metaphor which I…
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Society for the Constructive Pursuit of Creativity
Posted in Favorites, Writing, tagged #SCPC, awesome, caffeine, cat herding, creativity, finishing, fun, humanity, Latin, Motivation, procrastination, productivity, TED, Thoughts, work, writing, yay on January 15, 2014| 5 Comments »
The Society for the Constructive Pursuit of Creativity, or SCPC. Yeah, I just made that up. As of five minutes ago it’s my new thing, and it is time to formulate some founding tenets. Like so:
— Be awesome. Duh. And ignore people who tell you that what you are working on is anything but. If you love it, that’s good enough.
— Be constructive. We’re on the planet to laugh and love and all that touchy-feely stuff but we are also here to make things. Elephants think, dolphins talk, even crows use tools. What humans do better than any other species yet met is build. (And don’t give me any guff about acres of mold growing underground or gigantic ant hills; that’s all well and good but when an ant designs the next great handheld device then we can talk.)
— Be productive. That doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk about it, just do your work without worrying too much about the next guy over.
— Be more productive than you were yesterday, or than you thought you could be when you woke up this morning dying for caffeine.
— Try not to overthink. That path leads to insecurity and insecurity leads to procrastination.
— If you must procrastinate, try to make it as constructive as possible. Just because you can’t do what you are supposed to do doesn’t mean you can’t do anything at all. Figure out what your mind will let you work on and do that. When you finish the new thing, add it to your To Do list so you can have the satisfaction of crossing it out at the end of the day. Design a new organization. See? Fun!
— If you happen to be less awesome or productive than you would like, do not under any circumstances beat yourself up about it. That’s like shouting at a cat, momentarily satisfying but with no long-term benefits whatsoever. Encouragement, goal setting, and bribery are much more effective. I prefer cookies or a chilled glass of Bailey’s, myself.
— Treat projects like practice. It worked for Ender. I take notes on the backs of used envelopes and write in pencil to convince myself that whatever I’m doing, it isn’t serious enough to stress over. Hey, whatever it takes.
— Along those same lines, do not be afraid to hack your mind! It’s a great way to increase productivity, to keep yourself from falling victim to those paralyzingly bad habits you developed in grade school, and if nothing else it gives you an excuse to watch good TED videos.
— Finally, fun is our watchword. Remember, if it isn’t fun and it won’t ever be fun and you won’t feel good about it after, you’re doing it wrong.
Motto: A Posse Ad Esse ~ From Possibility to Actuality
…
Right, that’s done. Now, what was I working on?
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